


Curiosity Overly Informed The Cat

by Marzi



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 18:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18393806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marzi/pseuds/Marzi
Summary: Bill was sprawled out on the ground with her current research project, Missy had given a few halfhearted complaints about dirtying the place up before going quiet and playing piano, and the Doctor was in one of the high backed chairs with a book on his knee. It was one of their quieter days, which was fine by Bill, she really needed to get this reading done, when Nardole walked in with a tea tray and started screaming.





	Curiosity Overly Informed The Cat

**Author's Note:**

> Just some nonsense as a bit of a palette cleanser after some other shit I was working on.  
> ETA after posting this I tweaked the title from 'Bad Thought' to what it is now and made a few minor edits.

 

 

It was all pretty normal, really. All domestic and cozy, which was really weird when Bill stopped to remember that the Doctor had locked a woman in a vault and promised to watch her for a thousand years. Yet when Bill didn't think about that part, when it was just the other bits, the Doctor, relaxing into a chair with a book, and a woman playing piano behind a force field so she didn't get bored and murder Bill. Alright. The last bit was also weird, but Bill was generally too engrossed with her homework and talking to the Doctor to think about the fact there was a reason the woman was locked up, even though she hadn't gotten a straight answer out of him or Nardole as to why. Going cold turkey from evil seemed shorthand for something very complex, something she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know. Except she did.

 

Sometimes Missy even stopped playing piano long enough to join in their conversations. Generally to chastise the Doctor and everything he knew and taught and insist Bill wasn't intelligent enough to grasp the basic principles of anything let alone the universe. She was only a little insulted the first time it happened, after that she learned Missy was mostly goading the Doctor and didn't care about Bill one way or another. They could put on a good show, the two of them, and sometimes, and the Doctor only admitted this when they were alone in his office, sometimes Missy was right and he corrected himself.

 

Nardole never joined them in the vault. Bill thought it was because he was mad at the Doctor for being flippant in his vault guarding duties. Wet blanket, she thought, the Doctor and Missy could be entertaining together. As much as she enjoyed the skewed domestic angle, and the impromptu philosophy debates between the universes two biggest ponces, there was another layer of subtext she wasn't aware of. Not until Nardole finally joined them in the vault.

 

Bill was sprawled out on the ground with her current research project, Missy had given a few halfhearted complaints about dirtying the place up before going quiet and playing piano, and the Doctor was in one of the high backed chairs with a book on his knee. It was one of their quieter days, which was fine by Bill, she really needed to get this reading done, when Nardole walked in with a tea tray and started screaming.

 

Bill leaped to her feet, scattering pen and paper everywhere. Her eyes jumped around the room, looking for the source of the horror. Was Missy free of her cage? Had the Doctor died in his chair?

 

"What-- what's going--" Bill didn't see anything amiss. Missy was looking over her shoulder at Nardole, and the Doctor had lowered his book.

 

Nardole dropped the tea tray and marched up to Bill. "Have you no shame?"

 

Bill blinked. "What--"

 

Nardole threw his hands over her eyes. "Doctor this is most indecent behavior, you will stop this at once."

 

Bill yanked his hands from her eyes and took a step away. "What are going on about?" She looked around the room. Missy was smirking, but she did that a lot. The Doctor ran his hands over his face and through his hair. He looked exasperated, which was pretty normal for him too.

 

"Nardole, you need to calm down--"

 

"I will not. Whatever tawdry things you two get up to-- which is wrong by the way, but River said she would never begrudge you any companionship though she would surely question your taste on this-- but to do it in front of Bill. Doctor!"

 

"Nardole they're just sitting there, there's literally a force field between them, what do you think is going on?" Bill bent down and began to pick up her papers, which were now stained with tea and littered with shards of porcelain.

 

Nardole threw his hands up in the air. "I can't even say it."

 

Missy flashed her shark tooth smile. "I can."

 

The Doctor jumped up from his chair. "No, no, aright Nardole clean up your mess. Bill. My office."

 

Bill's hand froze mid-flap as she tried air drying a page of her notes. "Uh... why?"

 

* * *

 

The Doctor sat behind his desk, his hands folded together and resting on top of it. Bill hadn't felt this weird about sitting across from him since the first time she had ended up in his office.

 

"Um... Doctor?"

 

"Yes?"

 

"What's going on?"

 

"Right. Well you know babies--"

 

Bill jumped up from her chair. "Oh my god, were you two having sex? Or time lord mitosis or whatever--"

 

"No! Let me finished. Humans babies."

 

That was a weirder topic. "What about them?"

 

"They need touch, as a whole your species needs physical contact in order to be healthy and grow."

 

Bill slowly sank back down onto her chair. "Yeah, I remember reading about the thing with the robot nannies and the infants. What's this got to do with you and Missy?"

 

"Time lords don't need physical contact." A beat. "We need telepathic."

 

"Oh-kay. So, when you're down in the vault you like, brain touch?" She tried to ignore her subconscious' sudden singing of  _Sweat, baby, sweat, baby sex is a Texas drought me And you do the kind of stuff that only Prince would sing about._

 

"Yes! Like holding hands."

 

She stared at him and his exaggerated relief for a few moments in silence. "You weren't holding hands, were you?"

 

"...no."

 

Bill jumped up from the chair again and shuddered. "Were you doing that all the times we were down there--"

 

"No. And Nardole is exaggerating. We weren't doing anything tawdry." The Doctor finally stood up, escaping behind his chair and kneading his hands along the top of it.

 

There was no innocence in those fidgets. "But you weren't telling me you were doing it."

 

"It's not something you would notice."

 

"Would other psychic--"

 

"Telepathic--"

 

"--whatever, would you have done it in front of people who can sense that kinda stuff?"

 

"Uh..."

 

"Ew! Doctor. Are you into non-consensual voyeurism?"

 

His mouth hung open a moment before he spluttered. "No. Of course not. And it wasn't..."

 

Bill squeezed her eyes shut and forced the word out. "...sexual?" This was definitely worse than The Talk she had gotten.

 

"No, not that. It's just... intimate. Missy doesn't have her TARDIS anymore, wont tell me where it is, and without that constant low-level telepathic bond, I just..."

 

"Look, I get it, keeping your friend-prisoner from dying is important, but Doctor, if it's that intimate, why were you doing it when I was there?"

 

"I didn't intend to the first time. We were just..."

 

"Hand holding." Bill ventured.

 

"Yes. And then..."

 

Bill pressed her lips together a long moment before speaking. "Hugging?"

 

"...yes."

 

"I don't want to make anymore comparisons so if you have an explanation please just get to it."

 

"Right, it just sort of happened. I didn't want to bring it up while you were there with us, and I didn't think it would happen again."

 

"But it did."

 

"Yes."

 

"Right. So you mentioned the TARDIS--"

 

"Her TARDIS there are--"

 

"--right, whatever, so you have the TARDIS, but a real person is better isn't it?"

 

"Yes." His hands became a different kind of fidgety then. Less guilty, more please don't say birds and bees to my face I have access to the internet and already know, kind of fidget.

 

"Right well. Cuddle all you want, just... don't do whatever Nardole saw you doing."

 

"Of course not."

 

"Because I don't want to know."

 

"Right."

 

Bill inched towards the door. "I mean if I knew I probably couldn't look you in the eye or something."

 

"Right."

 

"Bye."

 

* * *

 

Bill did eventually go back to the vault. The Doctor honestly seemed to like spending his time there, and ever since their awkward chat in his office Bill kept thinking about babies and robots and how being isolated messed up people well enough and a really messed up time lord was probably bad news. Maybe that was part of why Missy was in the vault. Nardole had taken it upon himself to chaperone most visits now, serving tea and shooting dirty looks at the guilty parties. The first few times he had done it Missy had adjusted her skirts, and turned around on the piano bench only for the Doctor to jump up from his chair a minute later telling her to stop.

 

Bill really didn't want to know. Except she kinda did.

 

Bill could go down to the vault by herself. She knew how to get through the door, and how to check that Missy was actually in the containment field before opening it. She normally didn't think about it. Emergencies only, the Doctor had said when he first showed her. Whatever kind of emergency that required her to go to Missy and not him was not one she wanted to think about. Still, she did eventually go to the vault by herself. It was kind of like an emergency.

 

Bill was just really curious and it was starting to affect her focus.

 

After double-triple-re-checking that Missy was definitely in the containment field, Bill went in. She had a notebook, as if that would somehow be a reasonable excuse for her to be here and the Doctor not. She entered the vault one awkward step at a time.

 

Missy was lounging across her piano painting her nails. "I do have things to do you know."

 

Bill blinked, then shuddered at the sound of the doors closing behind her. "Right well, I'm not here to stop you."

 

"Oh, I have your permission to blow up the university and commandeer the Doctor's TARDIS? I'll let him know, when his pets say it's okay anything goes."

 

"What? No, I never said anything like that."

 

Missy sat up. "Well you can't say you aren't here to stop me then stand in my way, that's lying, the Doctor doesn't like that you know. Unless he's the one doing it."

 

Bill wasn't even going to start to unpack that. "Look, I just wanted to ask you something."

 

"What do the Doctor and I do when you see us sitting together."

 

"Yeah." Bill smiled with relief.

 

Missy smiled at her.

 

Silence dragged between them.

 

Bill shuffled her feet.

 

"You do realize you've yet to ask a question." Missy set aside her nail polish and pushed herself off the piano.

 

"Oh, right." She was going to make her say it then. "What do you and the Doctor do... what were you and the Doctor doing that made Nardole flip out and try and cover my eyes?"

 

"You really want to know?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"Really?"

 

"Why, is it bad?"

 

"Do you want me to answer that question or your first one?"

 

"What, I only get one question?"

 

Missy opened her mouth but Bill barreled ahead of her speaking.

 

"First question, answer my first question."

 

Missy swayed in place, skirt shifting around her, and trailed her finger across the containment field. The Doctor had assured Bill it was an unpleasant sensation. Missy didn't seem to mind it one bit. "Well, if you really want to know, you could say he was giving me the telepathic equivalent of a foot rub."

 

Bill blinked. She waited for Missy to say something else. She didn't.

 

"That's it? The Doctor said it was intimate."

 

"And you wanted to know what we were up to after he said that? Naughty girl." She winked at Bill.

 

"Ew, no. I just.. was expecting something else."

 

Missy rolled her eyes. "You humans and your obsession with fluids. It's a wonder you ever made it out of the soup with your determination to jump back in it every chance you get."

 

It took Bill a moment but her imagination was more than willing to conjure up an image to match Missy's words whether or not she wanted it to. "I'm just saying... foot rub, by human standards, not that intimate."

 

"You ever see the film Pulp Fiction?"

 

Bill laughed. " _You've_  seen Pulp Fiction?"

 

"Yes, all three and a half of them."

 

"Wait, there's only--"

 

"Do you remember what happened to the man who gave a foot rub to the entrepreneur's wife?"

 

"Entrepreneur? You mean gang-- oh."

 

"You don't let just anyone give your lady a foot rub."

 

Bill decided she didn't want to know if Missy was the Doctor's lady. There were some things you just didn't want to know.

 

Except she kinda did.

**Author's Note:**

> Is Bad Touch by Bloodhound Gang still a Thing people randomly start singing at inappropriate moments? How old is Bill Potts anyway? Did that shit make it across the pond to be a kinky and utterly ridiculous ear worm for everyone? I think Pulp Fiction stands on its own so I don't need to justify it.


End file.
